Kindness as Transformation: A Metacognitive Moment With A Humanities Educator
Dr. Carey L Holleran sees kindness as the “underlying ethos” that physical therapy curricula strive to cultivate in students. In this report, she describes a moment when she rendered this concept a profound reality with a group of students. She wrote a personal letter to them, sharing her deepest faith-based reflections on treatment, and read it aloud in class. She presents that letter here. “Lean in with unexpected kindness every chance you get,” it reads. “When we deliver unexpected or even what we might think is undeserved kindness, we are agents of our own change for the better.”
A Mere Reflection: When the Curtain Closes
Sophie Kooy trained as a ballerina when young, only to have her dreams shattered in an auto accident. This heartfelt reflection details her despair, what kept her alive when she felt no longer able to live, and how she eventually found healing. She also found a new passion—one that her vigorous training as a dancer, she now realizes, prepared her to take on. She is currently sharing her gifts with the world in a new direction that readers will applaud.
Exploration of the Use of Balint Groups in Physical Therapy Education
This study conducted interviews with occupational therapists to report on their perceptions of political advocacy. The interviews identified three key ways that advocacy fundamentally benefits OT: It helps practitioners fight for clients’ access to quality care; it advances the profession itself; and it can continually influence policy changes. But how can OTs find the time, and the space, to advocate? Quotes from interviewees bring the abstract down to the clinic level.
Miraculous Medicine
Dr. Morgan Kelly recounts just one of her countless profound experiences with patients in the ICU. Her words encourage us to consider life and death; should all those who are clinically dead be brought back to life through technology? This patient didn’t want it, preferring to be back with “my God.” This poem prompts the reader to consider that two truths can exist concurrently: miraculous medicine to save lives and faith in a peace beyond death.
Stroked Poet: Thirteen is a Lucky Number
Barbara Huntington offers readers a fascinating chance to experience the workings of a poet’s brain post-stroke. These 13 poems, written as the days play out, move from confusion to blinding clarity and back again. Throughout it all, the poet is sharply aware, watching it all, commenting on it for the world to witness. At one point, he offers a brilliant commentary in ¾ time! This is an experience well worth sharing.
The Descent
This brief, powerful poem captures the agonizing experience of a frightened hospital patient—anonymous yet on display to strangers, alone in their “silent cries.” Beautifully composed, this masterful piece hits home in a few, raw seconds.